Where that food comes from…

The chicken farm here that produces chickens for market has had all the doors open on the chicken houses for awhile and no chickens..

 

First threshing of the year today.
The straw came from a neighbouring farm and is very high quality.

Unfortunately this means the bunches are heavier than usual so I found this morning's work a lot harder than I'm used to.
Some of the bunches must have been about 25lb rather than the usual 18lb.
With the leverage on the end of a pitchfork and having to lift them up to 6' above my head as the trailer gets to it's last courses it is a good workout.
Moved about 2 tons this morning and will do the same again this afternoon.
The other farm is only about a mile away so it has had similar weather and soil conditions but it is better quality than ours. Perhaps due to using more fertilizer. Not only is the straw better but there seems to be a better grain yield.
Paul might have to up his fertilizing this year. With the extra yield in both wheat and straw it is probably worth the extra expense.

 

Bird flu????

 

I don’t know. Some of the houses are now full.

 

When my uncle had chicken houses they were left empty for cleaning and such.

 

Bird flu has caused a lot of problems here.
A lot of flocks have had to be destroyed and there have been a lot of shortages of eggs. Supermarkets have had to limit how many eggs each customer can buy and shelves have still been empty.
Even with imports increased from 15% to 30% of supply I've only been able to get some on one of the last 3 occasions I've tried.
Free range eggs haven't been available at all for several months as the hens have not been allowed outside.
Prices at my local supermarket have increased by 20% from £2 a dozen to £2.50.

 

That could be the reason. Some of the houses are in use.
.

 

Had a second to spare and a nice gentle cow so got a pic of what it looks like tagging newborn calves from my perspective.

 

Surprising how little has changed here.
Swap out tractors for the horses and tarpaulins for thatched stacks and the rest is pretty much the same.
Paul still uses a scythe rather than a strimmer/bushwhacker if he's cutting down thistles.

 

He probably thinks the scythe does a better job and he maybe right.

 

In certain respects, the old(e) ways can be more efficient, but slower. Mechanized processes allow for more waste.

 

There is nothing cuter than a newborn calf. They have a beautiful face with those big eyes.

 

And the satisfaction of knowing you did it and are happy with the results.

 

I just took this pic a couple days ago of where the food comes from in Virginia:



When the crops are full grown it's a tunnel of corn....and it conceals the sneaky sheriff's deputies waiting to pounce on unsuspecting speeders.

And for all the smokers out there, here's where the cigarettes come from:



The farmers in the Old Dominion have been growing some of the finest leaf in the world for 400 years now...

 

Meanwhile, here's where some of my tomatoes will be coming from...



I'm trying something different this year. Instead of spacing them out as is typically recommended, I planted two seedlings in each spot and packed them all together. So far they look great, but Mother Nature really hasn't tested them yet. We had a mild spring and just reached 90 degrees for the first time last week. Next week they're going to be subjected to our first heat wave where it's going to be in the low to mid-90s for at the foreseeable future. Since they're planted close together they'll be shading each others roots, which is all part of my nefarious plan. We'll see how this works out in a couple weeks.

 

I buy my eggs from honest boxes, the joys of living up North, £1.50 a dozen.

 

I know a lot of varieties do not want to set fruit when the temperature gets above a certain amount.

 

Chicken has gone insane. Walmart wanted about $15 for four chicken breast. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay that.

For $15 those four breasts should already be breaded and fried

 

Corn looks pretty good.

 

Yup, I have that problem with my favorite tomato - Carbon. When it starts climbing into the 90s they'll start gaggin' out. My Virginia Sweets are a bit more heat tolerant but I've noticed that they'll stop producing when the temps get into the upper 90s.

A couple of years ago I stumbled across a great cherry tomato - Sungold Hybrid - that will keep flowering and cranking out fruit through the hottest weather. They're super productive (and tasty) plants so I plant a bunch of them every year knowing that if the large indeterminates shut down the Sungolds will keep me in tomatoes. This year I even planted a succession crop of Sungolds in the middle of Summer when I usually wouldn't plant any tomatoes and the seedlings powered through the heat no problem. They'll keep cranking out fruit until the first frost/freeze kills them some time in mid to late October.

 

Sure does.

The guys who planted corn in our area (Southern Piedmont of Virginia) harvested their crops a couple weeks ago. The only crops I'm seeing in the fields now are soybeans, cotton and tobacco. I always like checking out the cotton fields right before harvest - from a distance they look like fields full of snow but without the cold weather. I'll have to try to remember to take a few pics this year.

 

That's crazy - we're paying half that in Virginia. I wonder why it's so expensive down there....

 

Cotton is a crop I know little about. I have an acquaintance in Kansas that has fooled around with it some but has since given up. Just too far north still I guess. Pics would be awesome.

It’s interesting the corn there is harvested but not soybeans. Soybean harvest almost always precedes corm harvest here. Some high moisture corn might get harvested ahead of soybeans or drought killed dry land corn, but on irrigated acres harvested for dry grain soybeans are always first.

It’s fun to hear about different regions.

 

They grow a good crop of tomatoes out in the county around here. So they must be growing a similar hybrid and I think they also plan a crop around this time of year

 

By the way, my little experiment in high density tomato planting worked out great - I'm having my best harvest ever. As I expected, when the plants got older and the weather got hotter the plants thinned out a bit, so I didn't have any issues with air flow and diseases. As long as you keep up with the staking you're good. I also used straw for mulch for the first time and it's worked better than any other mulch I've used.

I also tried another approach to high density planting using tomato cages which works great for tomatoes like Sungold Hybrid cherry that get really gangly (I imagine this would work great with gangly plum varieties, too). I've been letting them grow through each other's cages, which has saved me from doing a bunch of staking, and like the other bed the density hasn't created any issues - in fact, it's been an asset all the way around.

Whether I'm using stakes or cages I'm definitely going to keep packing my tomato plants close together in the future. I've gotten much better results doing this than spacing them apart.